CircuitPrinter: Difference between revisions

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There's an Epson inkjet printer that has refillable tanks for ink. They can be filled with some kind of cool material for printing conductive ink. You can print traces on photographic paper.
'''What’s going on here''': This is an Epson L310 inkjet printer, loaded with conductive ink to allow it to print circuits onto paper. The printer itself isn’t really anything special, aside from the fact that it uses tanks to hold ink instead of cartridges, which makes it much easier to add nonstandard inks.


[[File:Circuit_printer_works_now.jpg | 640px ]]
[[File:Circuit_printer_works_now.jpg | 640px ]]
 
'''Ink''': The ink is a suspension of silver nanoparticles, making it able to conduct electricity just dandy. It is not cheap, and we currently don’t have a whole lot of it. So please refrain from printing out your massive epic circuit diagram that you’ve been adding to each year as a metaphor for your life, and I would also prefer it if you refrained from using this printer just because you want your artwork to be shiny. I’m working on the supply issue, and yes I want people to use the printer, just '''don’t be a dick about it''' is all. Thank you.
'''Paper''': The circuits can’t be printed onto any old paper. According to the ink manufacturer, the paper they sell is specially designed to something something better conductivity, although they acknowledge that glossy photo paper will also work. So that’s what we’re going with. '''Paper goes into the printer glossy side up'''. The manufacturer supplied paper that’s size A6, which is about ¼ the size of a normal sheet, probably because circuits don’t need to be that big. Seems like a good idea, and I’d like to figure out how to reliably cut to that size as a standard. Until then, just try not to waste too much paper. Or ink. I may have said that already.
'''Design''': If you have your circuit as a pdf of image, that’s awesome, just plug your computer into the USB cord coming out of the printer and go to it. Make sure you have the '''right size paper''' selected, and also '''glossy''' and '''high quality''', hit print, and you’re done. If your design is in Eagle, you can print directly from there, but I haven’t found a way to change print settings, so it’s a lower quality print that comes out. No idea yet how much of a difference it makes in terms of conductivity or anything, so to be safe, I recommend exporting your design as a high quality image, and then printing the image.


[[File:Circuit_paper.jpg | 480px | left ]]
[[File:Circuit_paper.jpg | 480px | left ]]

Revision as of 10:09, 2 January 2017

What’s going on here: This is an Epson L310 inkjet printer, loaded with conductive ink to allow it to print circuits onto paper. The printer itself isn’t really anything special, aside from the fact that it uses tanks to hold ink instead of cartridges, which makes it much easier to add nonstandard inks.

Circuit printer works now.jpg

Ink: The ink is a suspension of silver nanoparticles, making it able to conduct electricity just dandy. It is not cheap, and we currently don’t have a whole lot of it. So please refrain from printing out your massive epic circuit diagram that you’ve been adding to each year as a metaphor for your life, and I would also prefer it if you refrained from using this printer just because you want your artwork to be shiny. I’m working on the supply issue, and yes I want people to use the printer, just don’t be a dick about it is all. Thank you.

Paper: The circuits can’t be printed onto any old paper. According to the ink manufacturer, the paper they sell is specially designed to something something better conductivity, although they acknowledge that glossy photo paper will also work. So that’s what we’re going with. Paper goes into the printer glossy side up. The manufacturer supplied paper that’s size A6, which is about ¼ the size of a normal sheet, probably because circuits don’t need to be that big. Seems like a good idea, and I’d like to figure out how to reliably cut to that size as a standard. Until then, just try not to waste too much paper. Or ink. I may have said that already.

Design: If you have your circuit as a pdf of image, that’s awesome, just plug your computer into the USB cord coming out of the printer and go to it. Make sure you have the right size paper selected, and also glossy and high quality, hit print, and you’re done. If your design is in Eagle, you can print directly from there, but I haven’t found a way to change print settings, so it’s a lower quality print that comes out. No idea yet how much of a difference it makes in terms of conductivity or anything, so to be safe, I recommend exporting your design as a high quality image, and then printing the image.


Circuit paper.jpg

There's also a pen that can draw circuits on the same paper. You can use your hand to draw with this pen. It's pretty cool from an art perspective.

The bottom right corner of the paper has a battery in the binder clip. The fold is touching the + and - sides of the battery, sending power to the LED, which is fastened with masking tape.